Being Healthy

When was the last time you really relished your health?  Let me guess, it was shortly after you lost it when you caught that nasty cold last spring?  Or something similar I bet.

We all have our ways of being mindful of our blessings, and I know I always resent it when people assume I forget to do so myself.  So instead of a message that goes "aren't you glad I reminded you" I'm going to give you a message that says "let me join you".

Let me join you tomorrow in a day of really relishing health.  

Your health.

Relish it.  Not because of what MIGHT happen, or even what WILL happen.  Not from fear.  Relish your health because you have it.  Simply because it's there... in whatever form it's there.

Start when you get out of bed in the morning and you feel your feet beneath you and your legs.  Your strong feet and your sturdy legs, right there where you left them and doing just as you bid them.  Then take a shower and really LOOK at your skin.  Feel your skin and just get all soapy and smooth and really enjoy how strong this envelope is that keeps all of your insides in.  Look at all the bits that maybe you hate, or that maybe are the wrong color or the wrong shape and think of how glad you are that at least all those hateful bits aren't trying to kill you with cancer.  Or heinous bacterial infections.

Dry off after your shower and wallow in the strength of your muscles.  Maybe they're not what they were, but I guarantee they're loads better than they will be.  Feel your pulse in your neck, in your chest, in your thumb, in the soles of your feet.  Flex your shoulders and stretch your back and feel how much it FEELS when you feel it.

Sing to yourself as the coffee/tea/babyformula gets made.  Hear your voice, cracky and cranky though it may be.  Hear the notes that only you can make: in the whole history of the entire universe your voice is yours alone.  What will you say in that moment?  If you're like me, it'll be a swear because you probably just stubbed your toe on something or dropped an egg on the floor.  But regardless of WHAT you say, relish the idea that you CAN say it.  

And you can understand it when you hear it.

Listen to the bus, or the metro, or the car as it trundles along and carries you to work.  Feel your hands grip your smartphone.  Smell the smells of your neighborhood going to work in the morning.  Let your bleary eyes droop closed at your desk as you log in to your workstation tomorrow morning, just for a moment, and savor that satisfying relaxation that your eyelids give you as they say "oh thank GAWD YES!"

Breathe deeply tomorrow.  With your mouth and your nose.  Feel your scalp and your hair and your knees and your fingernails and your moles and freckles and those scabs you can't seem to shake off from that bike accident a month ago.  

Wallow in the you-ness of tomorrow.  Savor your health tomorrow.  Join me.  As I will join you.  And together we'll add a little bit of happy to an otherwise dastardly and boring and frustrating day.  

Let me know how it goes.

Whatever

Can. NOT. Think of a clever title for this.

Maybe when it's done I'll call it something.

But so anyhow do you ever get that feeling that you've been doing everything right recently?  Like you're all "yeah!" and "awrright" as things go smashingly from one task to the next?  And then you get that sneaking suspicion that you're living on borrowed time and you're about to do something horrifyingly humiliating or something and all of that positive inertia is about to take a giant dump in your oatmeal?

That was me about two weeks ago, believe it or not.  And the good news is that the ol' universe bill (of which we're all so fond)  hasn't really been that costly this time around.  Luckily (and am I NOT composed entirely of luck?  your answer will indicate that I am.)  I said, Luckily, I just got a cold this time around.

Any of you longtime followers will know how I handle colds.  That is, poorly.  Google up the term "man cold" and you'll get a feel for where I go when the sickness starts to dig in to my sinuses and shiver my guts to pieces.

So you'll all be pleased to know that I've been very brave this time around.  I'm medicating like a stopwatch with the naproxen and the ibuprofen and the nyquil-derivatives and apart from feeling bruised and gooey, I'm feeling quite fine thankyouvery much.  Except for how I also generally feel like crap.

I'll have you know that I'm writing this in about my fourth hour of consciousness for today and the vertical-ity is doing a bang up job on my ability to see straight.  So do not depend on this episode for coherence is what I'm saying.

But my lungs are still hamburger-y and my nose is red as a tomato and all of my built-in airways seem to be eager to smother me the very moment I drop off to sleep.  My muscles are...  itchy.  My back is...  tweaky.  My eardrums itch and my tongue feels...  needles-y.  So I have, as it were, a man cold.

And on top of that, I feel like crap.  I miss home.  I miss my family.  I miss having a job where I have my personal space and a clear timeline in which all involved parties place their well deserved trust.

I miss breathing through both sides of my nose at once.

I miss that courage-y feeling of stepping onto the metro in the morning with my little headphones popped into my little earholes; when I think about how I'm going to kick today's ass with room to spare.  I miss the daredevil adventure of getting lost on my way to the grocery store in a town I've only ever been in for a few weeks.  I don't miss sleep.  I've been doing loads of that lately.  I do miss clarity.  I know I know, shuddup Carlos, I'm not supposed to WANT clarity.  But frankly, evil as it is, I could do with just a hint of the kind of clarity you read about in hero stories these days.

Direction?  I don't really need that.
Just a little bit of clarity though, just a touch, could go a long way.

Full disclosure, this whole 'poor me' funk I'm in likely has something to do with the treadmill of modern chemistry that I've spent most of today slogging along.  My own seratonin supply is pretty hoopty as it is, and the regular dose I take to reign that shit in is very likely having to share the airwaves with all this other stuff I'm chugging down.  SO I'm guessing that as long as I don't need to contact any scary bald guys named 'Heisenberg' for my meds in the next few days....  as long as I don't end up eating EVERY SCRAP of cookie-based carbon in the zipcode...  as long as I get my schlumpy arse out of bed tomorrow morning and realize that the sun did come up after all...

I'll very likely, and in all probability, be largely quite perfectly fine.

Funny how catching a cold can make a girl feel so go-ram sick.  you know?

An open letter to mean girls everywhere

Hi there.

I'm the girl you hate.  I have mismatched socks.  I don't wear good fashion and I have dorky looking book bag probably because my parents don't have a lot of money to spend.  Additionally, I'm not that smart and I am having a hard time keeping my grades up.

You don't want to sit with me at lunch because I have mussed up hair that sticks out and you say I smell like pee.  I don't smell like pee but you say I do so that nobody else sits next to me.  My dad has a good job but he gets home late and leaves early in the morning and so I don't have a lot of chance to hang out with him.  Your dad is fun and plays catch with the older boys in front of the school while he helps kids get to the bus but my dad doesn't do that.  You say it's because my dad is stupid and poor and because he cleans toilets with his bare hands for a living.  He doesn't.

You are a cheerleader.  You are a soprano in choir.  You take voice lessons and acting lessons and you play soccer on the weekends and you are a lot stronger than me.  I'm already pretty clumsy and I'm not that good at carrying a lot of things at once so you trip me and tell me to have a nice fall.  Everyone laughs.

I'm not that good with numbers or money yet.  In class I get a lot of questions wrong and I can hear you hiss and giggle behind me.  I know it's you kicking my chair for no reason.  Remember that one time when we had to be partners in class and you just rolled your eyes and spent the whole period putting on lip gloss and texting messages to your friends about how stupid I was?  Remember that one time when you said that a cute boy liked me and so I talked to him and as soon as I did you and your friends burst out laughing behind me because he didn't know who I was?  Do you remember the time you pushed me into the dirt and you said it didn't matter because that's all that I was, was dirt, and how my clothes were probably stolen off of dead people anyways?  Do you remember all of that?

I do.

I cry a lot.  Sometimes you see me crying and you laugh at me because I'm a crybaby diaperbaby.  Sometimes I have to go to the office because I'm crying hysterically and all you can do is laugh at what a poopy pants diaper baby I am.  You thought I didn't hear you.  I heard you.

I'm the girl you hate.  I'm the girl you laugh at.  I'm the girl you spend endless hours avoiding and obsessing over with your friends at sleepovers as you try to come up with better ways to make me say or do something that you won't be able to help yourself but laugh at.

I could say that you just do it because you're jealous.  But you and I both know better.  There is nothing in my whole life that you envy.  There is not one single breath in my whole life that you think could be possibly better than one of yours.

I could say that you do it because you know that deep down I'm smarter and stronger than you.  But you and  I both know better.  I'm weak and I'm not as smart as you.   I can't run as fast or jump as high and I don't get nearly the good grades that you do.

I could say that you do it because this is the one time in your wretched little life that you'll have any power over anyone.  I could say that you do it because you, yourself, are too stupid to realize that human dignity is far more valuable than any app, any earring, any kiss from any boy anywhere.  I could say that you do it because you don't know what else to do.    But I'd be fooling myself to think that you'd understand what any of that means.  Because I don't even understand what any of that means.

I'm just the girl you hate.  I'm the simple-minded, clumsy girl in hand-me-down clothes.  I don't go to your church.  My dad works in a different place.  I live in a different part of town and my house is very very different from yours.

I'm the girl you hate. I'm different.  And you hate that.

And for the next six years of your life you will make me hate myself.  And for the next thirty years of my life I will have to re-learn what it means to be special in a good way.  For the next six years of your life, you will make me consider ending mine.

And I will hate you back.  For many years I will hate you with all the venom that my poor little frame can summon.

And for many years I will have to justify to myself every time I try to forgive you or let you go from that hateful place in my heart.

And ultimately, I will wish you the best.  Because as a grown up, I have changed.  And I will hope like hell that you have too.

And if you are lucky enough to get a second chance to be my friend...  I have no idea how that is going to go.

Neither will you.

But it doesn't matter because all you know now is that I'm the girl you hate.

and all you need to know is that it doesn't matter how much you hate me first...  I'll hate me worse later on.
and I'll hate you most because of that.

When it rains, it pours.

Back home in Colorado, rainstorms are precious and life giving.  They can be fiddly and distracted or they can be can after can after can of utter whoopass pouring down on what's left of the rubble of your domicile...  or they can be something in-between.

But they rarely last more than a half an hour.
Hour, tops.

And then the sun comes out and dries up all the rain and the itsy bitsy spider gets back to trying to get up the ol' water spout where it will ultimately die of desiccation.

I just used "desiccation" in a blog.  Booyah.

Out here it rains for days.  It rains cold, it rains hot, it rains up and sideways and loop-de-loop and once, I swear to all the gods that can hear me, it rained bright pink for twenty minutes straight.  It rains steam.  It rains great, blanketty torrents of watergobs the size of your shoes.  It rains whole puddles at once that splat ontop of cars and set off the alarms.  It rains fusty little maple-leaves too, by the way.  Clouds of them at a time getting swept up from their sun-soaked tree branches and then twiddling earthward; a million zillion helicopters all jostling for real-estate in the dog-poop lawn by the parking lot.

Eventually the sun comes out.  Clouds part and tear and scrape away toward the Atlantic and adventures beyond.  Rain-breath rises up from the blacktop and the concrete and the sidewalks and the brick faces on the row-homes.  The clammy temperature of the air rises one single degree and suddenly it's like walking around in someone's mouth.  Musty city steam sticks to everything.  Stormsteam, it lunges at you and hugs you all over and makes your clothes stick and pull and makes (my) hair curl and go wild.  It slicks itself into your bedroom and under the covers and it stifles you with breathy, unwanted kisses all night.

And then the ghost of storms past relents and the weather turns nice again.

Rain out here is so different from rain back home.  But it's still the same damned thing.  Storm builds, storminess descends, aftermath lingers, sun rises again.

Sun always rises again.  In Colorado, it's annoying.  We just get settled in for a long afternoon of rainy weather and then a half hour later it's all disney creatures and rainbows out there and everyone's just basically putting the cocoa away and sneering and getting back to work.  Out here, the sunshine is more of an old friend.  But so is the rain.  You have plenty of time to get to know both.  AND you're always keen for the other one as soon as the first one starts to stick around for kindof too long.

Rain.  It rains.
And then it's sunny.

And there you go.

Attitudes. I haz dem.

Hey gang!  I'm back!  Ya miss me?

oh that's not fair.  I haven't gone anyplace and the transparent grasp for attention is just really too much even for me.  I have, however, become a particularly fudgy and ill-advised version of myself, so I'll just take a moment here to kindof try to make myself accountable and crawl out of the ol' pit (OF DESPAIR!!!) yet again.

For the hozillionth-eth time.

The good news is, kids, that I had a kickass April.  No seriously.

And now I'm spent and my brain is rather like how the water is when you ask it to get back into the balloon. First day back at work in a month was awesome.  Whole place went to beans while I was gone and gosh darnit if that doesn't stoke a fire under the ol' ego then nothing will.  Turns out, I really am part of the solution.

At home I'm all precipitate.  But at work, I am totally solution.

Another thing I've kvetched about in here is a certain health situation that many if not most of us ladies have to wrestle with and the results on that bad boy came back as pretty much good news.  Now I'm the sort of kicked-puppy who knows better than to just take good news at face value.  You see, I've been burned before by those big disney eyes that good news uses to beguile me into relaxing.  But I've also been in this rodeo for a long time.  And I know many more women who have been in the game for far, far longer.

A quick catchup bordering on too much information:

I get lots of ASCUS results.  It's kindof a career for me.  All you menfolk out there can go and look this up but the squeemish had best look away and maybe check in next week or something.

Ever since I started going for my annual "grownup" exams...  it's pretty much always included a professional on the other end with pursed lips, a tilted head, and the ACSUS explanation pouring forth from her perfectly well educated heart.  "don't worry" they say.  "it's fine" they say.

And they're right.  It's fine.

Until it's not.  And then one year it wasn't.  And I bought a ticket for the colposcopy train.  And then everything was 'grossly normal' (egad I hate that beshitted diagnosis) for a good while and then all of the sudden I was back to ASCUS.

Well if that isn't the shit in your oatmeal, I'll tell you what is.  I have always, always only ever tested negative for the HPV.  If they can test for it, they tested for it...  every variation known to science.  And I'm as bereft of the stuff as I am of tentacles, stingers and ex-ray vision.  So they're like "don't worry".  And they're like "it's fine".  And I'm like, "get the goddam ice-cream scoop already and just take everything out, I don't need it!"

And then, last year, they found some high-grade nastiness and we decided to save my life with a LEEP.

The aforementioned ice-cream scoop was employed but except for ice cream it was my insides and instead of a scoop it was a burning hot laser knife.  9999 times out of a thousand, it goes really well and nobody feels a thing.  I was the 'one' and felt everything.  However, as I told myself, if this is the (allbeit barbaric) medicine that keeps me in this plain of mortal existence for another little spell, then let's just ride it out.

Also, I told myself, I was noble as hell for taking one for the team of the thousand of other women who'd now get through the process utterly unperturbed and probably drinking tea and watching gray anatomy throughout the whole thing.  You're welcome.

So now, as you are well aware, we are at the season of the SECOND FOLLOWUP.  1st one was groovy. "all is well" they said.  "looks good" they said.  "Come back in six months after the scar tissue starts to receed".   And I'm like "GAH!" but also "a'aight".

And so now my test results come back and I'm back on that beshitted ASCUS boat again.  Short of a hysterectomy, they pretty much scooped out as much as is scoopable...  so there's not much tissue to sample.  But what they sampled is still being atypical with a dash of squaumous and I'll be damned if I hear another "don't worry" speech, another "it's fine" lecture without slapping someone.

If I didn't want to worry, I wouldn't go get checkups.  Preventive care only works if it's preventive.  So, as far as I can see, it's time for this shit to start preventing something or I'm going to have to go back to the little dudes with the loincloths and start getting my shaman-medicine on because this whole ankles-to-jeezus thing just really isn't doing it for me.

The short version:  I'm fine.  Don't worry.  The good news is, that everything in the test appears to be grossly normal.  Perfectly par for the course, you see.  So I'll take another ticket for the checkup train next year and we'll play the game again.

And if I EVER hear about any of you skipping your annual exams...  I will come over there and give you the scowling of a lifetime.  In the short time that you all have known me, I feel comfortable in asking you to do one thing for me:  Get Your Annual Exam.  Not for you, not for your family, for me.

Preventive care, after all, only works if it's preventive.


And finally, the short short SHORT version?  My medical history is summed up nicely in the included video below.

P.S.  I wonder what they'd get if they tested for lignin-based activity?  best not ask...

Speak not the name

Oh gawd my kitty is sick.  She's very sick, actually, and is in the "take her to the vet 'cause she can't keep anything down" bucket.  More accurately, she's in the "take her to the vet again 'cause now she's barfing stinky brown liquid and even though her bloodwork came back normal the pain in her gullet is not subsiding and she hasn't pooped in two days (though she didn't seem constipated) and GODS I just can. not. conceive of things going badly for her right now." bucket.

She'll need an exray tomorrow to find out if it's blockage or pancreatitis.
Maybe she'll need a few thousand dollars in surgery.  Maybe not.  Maybe just a few days of hydration and anti-vomit meds and a careful all-day-eyeball from the vet.  Maybe she'll finally supervom this uber-hairball-del-diablo over the course of the night and will stop pretending she can hide behind the dust bunnies under my bedroom chair.

Gods.  I can. not. deal.

Not with this.

So subject change.

Wasn't that abrupt?  Yes.  Very nice.

For my own medical purposes, the headache thing went away and the rest of the day was good as has been every day that followed thereafter.  Just once last June, and now this one - little ophthalmic migraine (use either of those words in scrabble and you're in golden-town!).  So that's a total of twice it's happened, and everyone I talk to says they're perfectly normal and benign until they're not and then you die.  So that's comforting anyway. 

Back to normal on that front.  You know?  and all my other medical stuff too - she said "GO!" and she meant it.  She was right.  I knew it.  I went.  I did the followup.  Everything's fine.  So two more checkups there and I'm officially free and bereft of the "probably not a pile of tumors but we don't know what it actually was, either". And that's comforting too.  In its own sadistic little way.  Two more checkups of "myeh" and I'm back to the "myeh" bucket and out of the "hunh, wtf" bucket.  I'll never be back in the "whatevs" bucket, but let's face it: I gave that bucket up years ago.  :)

Finally on the docket of things to address: Sandy.  She's this big fat hurricane thingy that just spanked the crap out of Cuba and all the local news stations can say (through their gritted teeth, below their knitted brows, and over their icy white knuckles) is that we're likely all going to die in a blast of salty icewater mixed with dragons and the kinds of horrors that would keep Edgar Allen Poe up at night.  And then there will be some flooding apparently. 

So what they're saying is "get out and see the trees in their autumn splendor now".  Because, clearly, after next week, we're boned. 

Well Sandy, if you're gonna' come hang out with me up here in Virginia, you should know I'm tight with the Thunder god of my ancestors and he'll be right put out if you spoil too much of things around here.  Things are plenty tense as it is and I do NOT intend to go to any more veterinary appointments while you're having your way with what's left of the local architecture.  No Ma'am.  You're welcome for a visit, to be sure.  Just mind your manners.  I gots to vote, too.  You know? 

I have a bunch of pals out here now, too.  And they'd sure be grateful if you left their roofs un-smashed and their basements un-swamped and their electricity...  well...  on.  Best not to be greedy, I know. 

Now if you'll all excuse me, I have to go worry about my cat some more.  My precious princess fluff-pants of joy, composed of butter and ribbons and rainbows.  Please don't leave me yet, sweet kitty.  We still need you.

Oh boy, is this gonna' seem like it's from left field...

Wow. Just. WOW.

First:  Power's back on for supergal.  Huzzah!  They'll survive this power outtage madness after all!

Second:  well, it's not like you can't see THIS coming  :  Mah Booook

*panting into a paper bag*

Seriously gang... it's available on Amazon.  Like Right Now.  The e-version mostly, but the paper version cometh, kids, and I'm not even barely kidding you when I find it both horrifying and exhillerating that copies are being purchased with REAL money by REAL people, right now this very second. 

Cue the brain
Brain:  what if they don't like it?
me: shaddap you.  this is a big moment.  don't piss on it.
Brain: but, you wrote it.  You know?
me: and that means?  Exactly?
Brain:  well, it means, exactly, that it's probably not that good.
me: *sobbing quietly*  Now that's not fair, brain.  "good" is not something I'm in a position to judge right now anyway with all this adrenaline.  We already know I'm no JK Rowboat, and I'm certainly not some sparkles-the-vampire novellist; I just wrote this on a dare so of course it's not the next great American Novel.  It's just my great American Novel.  And it's my first one.  So people have to be nice.
Brain:  *silence*
me: don't they?
Brain:  no.  no they do not.  And they have the internet to insulate them.  You REALLY think you're going to get some "throw money at me now" kind of review that's going to put your book on anyone's maps for real?
me: well no.  Not really.  It'd be nice.  But no.  I know this is a small potatoes deal.  It's been fun though, right?
Brain:  It's all fun and games until someone barfs at the book signing.
me: oh shit.  book signing.
Brain: and yeah, and you should read it aloud to people too.
me: oh shit.  Public Speaking.
Brain: didn't think of that, did you?
me: no.
Brain: so yeah.  So what if they. Don't. Like. Your. Product?
me:  um...  'scuze me while I go jam my thumbs in my ears and sing me a few bars of that "la la" song...

-fin-

Here ends brain-ster-piece theater.  I'm seriously loving this self publishing thing but at the same time I realize (with all the grace and dignity of a jello-salad on a speeding Yugo) that this is NOT a quit-your-dayjob kind of gig.  I'm horrified at the thought that my most beloved friends, family and minions alike will get a sniff of this, read in a few pages, and roll their eyes clear up into the tops of their skulls and start thinking of nice things to tell me over the phone before politely changing the subject.

A good man told me today, however, that I'm not supposed to like being all exposed like this.  But that the discomfort is supposed to make my next book better.  I'm supposed to learn from this and get character built and crap.  Dammit he's right.  He's a good dad to his own kids, and now he's taken me under his wing and started telling me dad stuff out here.  AND he's got extra swing because he's from Ethiopia and he has this disarming way of telling me to nut up without actually making me feel like a spoiled asshole.

In a final headline of this blog post, I should tell you that in a fit of cathartic exuberance, I'm going to join up with supergal tomorrow down in Washington DC for the fourth of July hooplah that will be abundant tomorrow.  With luck, pictures will follow. 

With more luck...  I'll have something new to whinge about real soon.

Not the whole story...

A hassled, but together, mother steps onto the train and sits with her pink-clad daughter in the empty seat in front of me.  Daughter is of undertermined age, hovering somewhere between Dora the Explorah and her first Disney Princess crisis. 

I have my earbuds in, so I just grin at them as they sit.  I don't hear their conversation.  I'm listening to Gogol Bordello sing about Musellini.  Daughter refuses to sit and instead kneels in her seat facing backwards.  Facing me.  She clutches the bar as she watches the trees shoot by our window. 

We make eye contact.  She smiles broadly.  She looks me over and moves on to silently examine other people in the train.

A conversation is nigh, I can feel it.  I take out my earbuds and wait. 

Daughter glances at mother.  She leans in toward me, conspirationally.  She says "Are you a monster?"

Mother and I are both taken by surprise.  Mother now makes eyecontact with me to quickly determine what manner of apology she needs to craft.

I signal to her that no apology is necessary, and I unleash my wide, most honored grin.

"Why would you say that?" I ask daughter.

"I think you are a monster." says daughter.  She's grinning broadly.  One giant sugar-cube of a tooth is jutting out of her mouth now...  others are nigh.  I notice she has a temporary tattoo of a peacock on the back of her hand.

"Well, I suppose I am." I said, and daughter was tremendously pleased with herself.  I said "Do you think I'm a good monster or a bad one?"

Daughter had to think about this.  She looked around the train car.  She did not notice the other businessmen and businesswomen listening with rapture to our delightful conversation.  She did not see their grandparent-ly grins or their furrowed brows of parental familiarity.  I did.  I was tremendously pleased with myself.

Daughter finally responded, thoughtfully.  "You are a good monster.  You breathe fire and you can fly but you don't eat people anymore."

I nodded my head proudly and gave her a confounded thumbs up.

Then she added.  "and you don't have a tail.  So that means you're nice now."

Like a thunderclap.  There it was.  Out of the mouths of babes, eh?  Stunned,  but not too stunned to laugh heartily at the situation, I said: "That's right.  I am a nice person now.  And so are you.  But you must remember to always listen to your mother because she is the one who keeps bad monsters away from you."

Daughter nodded her head energetically and reached over to grip her mother's hand tightly.  "Mom would never let me sit next to a bad monster.  I know that." 

Delighted, daughter sat down in her seat properly and played with the sparkles in her shirt until the next stop which turned out to be their destination.  Moments before they disembarked, Mother looked over at me and smiled the smile of "thankyou" mixed with "I don't know who the hell you are, but..."

I nodded back.

An man with leathery skin and a rumpled newspaper then leaned over to me.  He growled  "that was fun!"
and three other people on the train car laughed discreetly in agreement. 

Blushing hard, I returned my earbuds to their docked position in my brain-holes and fast-forwarded to some Everly Brothers. 

It was fun.

been a spell, eh?

Oh gentle reader. There are times, gentle reader, in my life. There are times when the overwhelming power and energy and beauty in my life becomes just so great, it is beyond bearing. And there are times, gentle reader, when life is so bereft of minutiae, nuance, color, life and magic that it, too, is beyond bearing.


There are ups. There are up-to-the-sky, kiss the moon if you try, sing and the heavens will cry, kinds of ups that can lift not only my own spirits but those of every living thing around me for miles around.


There are downs. There are tarry black, sickly silent, hide behind the couch and never come out, downs. The downs radiate and contaminate and make everything thick and unmanageable for everyone around me.


Lucky for us, gentle readers and slathering minions alike, we live in a modern age of science and chemistry and just a few hundred thousand whack-o theories about space goons inhabiting our brains.


There is medicine.


And there is booze.


And may the gods bless both in equal, lusty measure; for the gifts of medicine, and the fitful glories of booze... they are great.


I have a job, you guys. Isn't that great?

It's a right-up-my-alley kind of gig. Pay is great. I can ride the metro to work. And (here's the catch) it's 50-60 hours per MONTH, you guys, so there's lots of time left on my happy schedule for things like writing and being silly and navel-gazing and such.


It's downtown DC too. And wow. That just NEVER gets old. I work in downtown Washington DC. One of the most globally-recognized cities in the world and JAM PACKED with people from alllll over the globe. As I'm sure I've already told you.


Trees are blooming, bees are buzzing, grass is growing so fast that it's getting mowed regularly now. Pools have been filled and are gleamingly blue in the daytime and dazzlingly multicolored at night (seriously, they put "rave" lighting in these things now!)


Larder is full. yup. Kitty is healthy and strong. My beloved husband is flourishing in his new job and each of his superiors tells him regularly how good he's doing (of course, in the same breath, they ask him to take on more responsibility too... so ... you know...)


Roof over our heads. Climate control. Doors that lock and cable television. Hot and cold running water and, by the gods, sliced bread in the fridge. As far as I know I'm healthy. As far as I know, things will stay that way. (caveats implied)


Life is good. I am clearly the wealthiest person on the planet and my luck, my amazing, befuddling luck, knows yet no bounds. Not a one.


So what if I feel absurdly blue every now and then? So what if I have bizarre conversations with complete strangers on the subway? Who the hell cares if I talk to myself in many languages while contemplating the nature of the universe? What business is it of anyone to object that I burn entire hours staring at bees or ants or paperclips? You know?


I know I don't fit. We all get that. My not-fitting-ness is no more or less obvious than it ever was anyplace else. That's my flag to wave and that's fine with me.


I'm homesick. I mope. But as a rule, everything is really REALLY good. and I just have to take a minute to remind myself (mostly) of that. Brain-storms be damned. Even at my worst I'm still awfully glad to be there for it.


I've been skipping writing here for a while because just as the cherry blossoms crested out here, I kindof got hit with ... let's say a rather epic chemical slump. The thinkmeat has been conspiring against me with terribly hurtful lucid dreams, way-too-vivid memories, and loads and loads of the kinds of stuff you're not supposed to torture yourself with until well past your second bottle of scotch. I'm coming back to the blog now because that's a familiar coat I've worn. It's heavy and it's cold and it's wet and I can see it for what it is and I'm trying to, if not shake it off, at least muscle through.


maybe with a little less alcohol. maybe with a little better attention to the meds.


and maybe, just maybe, gentle readers, with a little more confidence in my opus of late which might this year actually even get a big fat grown up barcode on it.


a'course.... going to bed at a reasonable hour would be a good habit to start up again too.

well, thanks for listening. 'nother boring "blah blah me" episode. I promise to go have some adventures now and do something silly in public and tell you about it with gusto upon my return. kay? MMMWAH!
g'nite!

It's probably just me...

Okay you guys, first off, let me just tell you that for SOME REASON I've been having this insatiable craving for hard boiled eggs. And chocolate. And marshmallows. And pastel-colored m-n-mz. Easter must be nigh, or something?

So anywayz, there I was in mah kitch'in. Right? I had just found the most awesom-est egg-salad recipe. And I had the best ever little jar of honey mustard for it. And then I decided to boil me up some eggs. MMMM. Boiled eggs. Right? Am I right?

Well - is it possible that I'm the only person in the world who sees this:



...and instantly thinks it is a face and then suddenly for the rest of [her] life can't see a group of 5 eggs in a pan without mentally seeing this: ?


Well, at least I know now that if I WAS the only person... I'm not any more.
Ain't I a stinker?

Ka-riss-miss is coming!

You know that old record where John Denver sings christmas carols with the muppets? I like that record.

It reminds me of "those yonder good old days" when I didn't understand nostalgia. When I thought that the Grinch really DID give Cindy-Lue Hoo a drink of water before she went to bed. When the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in the whole world was a six foot tree in the living room, wilting under the weight and heat of those "don't touch them or you'll die" giant christmas bulbs.

I loved that. The colors dazzled my soft little brains and I could think of nothing, NOTHING, but of the happy miracle to come... that was the presents, by the way. The whole miracle-baby story was utterly lost on me until well into my teens. For me it was more like, "that Jesus is so lucky to have his birthday on Christmas!" you know? And, as much as I hated walking up the street in the icy weather, in the dark, to a cold building that smelled of peppermint and chanel no 5, I really REALLY loved the candle light service.

Singing silent night in an ancient wooden church, surrounded by the people in your community... what an amazing ritual that was. And even though most of the booky-book business was still lost on me, I knew that as soon as the lights in the church went down, and that magical flame got passed from candle to candle, and we all inhaled to sing the notes of the most familiar song in the northern hemisphere... something really important was happening. That singular ritual was quite a highlight for me. The tedium of waiting for it, the itchy clothes and the boring speeches both pre and post all paled in comparison to watching with my whole soul as the wick on my perfect little white candle caught the flame and started glowing red.

It smelled like magic. The air immediately tasted differently. Heat fluttered up from the flame and melting wax crept down the candlestick toward the useless paper circle and my tender, icy fingers. Even the burns from the melted wax were part of the ritual. Older kids dripped it on eachother when their parents weren't looking, younger kids trembled in terror as they awaited their first, innaugural burns. I sang in the candle-lit darkness between my parents and stared at that one teeny flame with all my heart.

It was like maybe, just maybe, if I believed hard enough, the whole world would finally turn around and hug me and say something really comforting and everything would change for the better.

It never really did, and to be fair it never really needed to.

After the service, we'd trot excitedly back down the road and with numb fingers we'd pour into the house for presents time. Dad would stoke the fire until it was roaring (to wit, a few memorable chimney fires were born of this tradition). The house was filled with reds and golds and piney-smokey smells and probably lingering scents of roast potatoes and beef juice. And Yorkshire pudding.

We all know what happens next, the frenzy, the laughter, the Woo and the ahh!

And every year, the moments leading up to the Woo were so much more magical than the Woo itself. The ceremony that it took to get to presents time seemed, even then, to be so much more important than the presents. Which, duh, it was... but it wasn't about God and Jesus, even then. Not for me. Sure, they were there, but for me, there was something else in it.

Now, those moments are bereft of churches and psalms and plastic baby jesusses glowing from within a halo of red-foiled poinsettia plants. I'm grown up, by most standards. Trees come in the easily manageable 3 foot size or not at all (not at all this year, I'm afraid). I'm kindof amazed to admit that we've downsized christmas... and I'm pretty okay with that. The downsizing doesn't really matter. Now it's not my own WOO that I'm waiting for. It's the WOO of family eating a delicious meal together and sharing silly stories from the year. It's the WOO of waking up in a chilly, humid guest room and knowing that not ten paces away is a house full of welcoming hearts and warm smiles and undiscovered happy memories. (with fruit! and caramel sauce! and giant pecans!)

Today, happy heathen that I am, I don't have to trudge to the middle of a century-old wooden building to stare at the flame and feel the magic, and I don't have to risk the safety of my entire apartment building with a strand of lights that would consume more energy in one hour than my computer does all day.

I'm proud to say that I have that magic with me all the time now - even when I'm grumptastically, sucktastically, frumptasctically revolting. That feeling is always more intense around my family ( my whole family ) but it's always there no matter what.

So while this sounds like the kind of entry that says "oh dear, christmas for grownups ist das lameness" it's more about how I remember feeling the first thrills of proper magic in my veins. I'm so glad I got to discover part of that in a church and part of that staring up at the impossible colorful tree in the living room. And I'm so, so glad that I don't have to have a church now to hold on to that.

Also I'm pleased that holiday light technology has improved too!

Back to complainin'

But this time, I'll try to do it like an easterner. (I dunno, though, what's that supposed to sound like? Seinfeld?)

*ah-he-heh-hem*
*ahem*

So maybe it's just me, but do people just not give a crap about sirens out here? GOOD LORD people! In an hour you can hear about 10 siren-y vehicles driving past... screaming their various little harmony-free, three-note songs as they carreen from intersection to intersection and come to a bristling, if festively lit, stop. I mean, I realize general Colorado-y traffic laws are right out the window but still, you know?

Ambulance? Wee-woo wee-woo doesn't cut it for you? You're going to make that poor driver fold in an aggressive sounding bloop-bloop? Still no good? On your phone you say? Well then have a butt-full of "MYARRRRRR" and see how that tastes. Good grief, kids. Seriously. And that's an ambulance with probably nobody in it and just on the way to like, a diabetes call or something. So you know, that's not the "someone's dying" orchestra.

Firetrucks are an entirely different symphony of jazzy little swears, BONK-BONK sounds, and the almost trifling undercurrent of a-woooooo, a-woooooo.

And has anyone considered getting cops to emergency situations in anything BUT a cop car? Because here, those vehicles seem to get the special "heh-heh riiiight" treatment. Like, the cop almost has to get out of his vehicle with a crowbar to get people to shuffle politely out of the way.

Honestly.

Now don't get me wrong, I live in a great neighborhood that's actually very quiet and subdued. We just happen to be in earshot of every emergency vehicle in the zipcode because about two of their whatever vehicular depositories are nearby. You know, like a busbarn for firetrucks but not a fully funded fire station? Something like that. The, um... emergency vehicle "pastures" are juuuust over there, see. So everytime they get called to duty it's kindof an "oh there they go again" kinda deal for everyone within about eight blocks.

Big city blocks too. Not like those mamby-pamby mountain-people blocks I'm used to. (pardon me while I sob quietly and mourn my sweet, beloved mamby-pamby mountain-people blocks.) *sniff*

okay, where was I?

Oh right, and remember how I pissed humanity right the hell off when I ran a red light recently? I mean... hypothetically speaking... just in case my mom reads this one.

Yeah, well, that AAA driving school gig that I attended appears to be from an entirely different manual from what people get out here. I imagine every page contains the words: "kill! Kill! KILL!" or something with lots of diagrams and pie charts justifying personal entitlement against, say, the needs of others who might have the bad taste to also be on the same road.

Not that it's that bad, here particularly, but the closer we get to the old stuff - the historical stuff and the brass-plate kind of stuff that people take their pictures in front of - the worse it gets.

To be fair, I'm not from here. And like the old joke implies where the man calls his wife and the wife says "darling! be careful! there's some idiot out there going the wrong way on the highway!" and he replies by telling her "one? there's HUNDREDS!"... yeah, it's probably just me.

Because let's be honest. I've been here for let's just say a few weeks now and I am starting to fit in about as well as a proctologist's endoscope fits up a person's tailpipe. Which is to say; I fit, and I'm certainly well designed for my location, but nobody is happy about it.

In other news, curtains went up today in the office and our bedroom and they're DARLING! Also we went food shopping for munchies for a movie night we're going to host tomorrow night.

Oh, and I have a beer at my side, so it can't be all bad.

Results Episode: PART ONE!

So this is supposed to be the entry where I thump my fist on the desk and say "I am going to like it here!" but you and I both know by now that it's still far, far too soon to declare such a thing. Even though I'll very likely do it eventually.

My beloved husband is at work today, his second day, and good LORD did he look handsome this morning. You know? Wow. One of his co-workers invited us on a "get to know the new kids" apple-picking adventure this weekend which I told him to accept before the words had even finished falling from his lips.

Can I tell you a secret though? I'm terrified. What will I wear? Who will I sit next to? What if there are giant spiders out there that make me freak out and cry? What if they think I'm lame?

Ahh, the torturous theater of the inner child. Especially the centuries-old, super shy one I seem to have in me. She's always whispering in my ear: you're not good enough. And yeah, to be fair... she's kinda' right most of the time. But here's the kicker: nobody is.

Nobody is ever "good enough". Ever. And it's big life changes like this that are supposed to make that okay. Moving across country like this is supposed to bring into focus certain things like "what is important" and "who is important" and "a little bit of flexibility won't kill you for chrissakes"...

So: A tree, when being dug up, only knows that her roots are being severed with a spade and that her living space is getting penned in to a degree that she hadn't allowed herself to imagine before. She only knows the violence of the relocation. You know?

A wise woman recently reminded me that a dug-up tree is almost always going someplace better, to be planted in brighter light, with better water, softer soil. A dug-up tree is almost always going to get bigger and stronger.

She was right. And now that this dug-up tree still misses her first spot, this new spot seems to be watering in nicely. It is a good spot. It is well chosen, and carefully chosen for the many attributes I'm so grateful for like the extra space (even though I bemoan CONSTANTLY how tiny it is) and the many windows (even though I'm still childishly sad at how few there really are) and the quiet neighborhood (even though there are sirens racing around town at all hours, endlessly).

So for me, for this little tree-spirit, moving across country was less "here's what is important" than "look you lived through Budapest, you can live through this". And since I'm still surrounded by stuff from home, the homesickness hasn't really kicked in yet. It still feels like I'm on some kind of really amazing, really inconvenient, really opulent vacation.

And here's a little something else I wasn't expecting. Now that I'm in charge of "The Home", and unpacking boxes is item number one on my resume... It would appear that my squishy, unreliable thinkmeat is doing the same thing.

The dreams I'm having, folks, Oh My GAWD the dreams. I'm not even kidding here. Everything in my head seems to have been shaken around and boxed up and moved around just like my physical surroundings and at night I'm left ripping open boxes with useful stuff and sometimes stuff I haven't looked at or touched in YEARS. Stuff I shouldn't be opening, mostly. I'm remembering stuff I thought I'd never have to remember again and it Ba-LOWS! My whole snowglobe brain has been shaken and is now swirling with confusion and disorientation and nobody remembers where the goddamed remote control is or where the corkscrew is or why the memory of slipping on the ice by the old stone library when I was in FIRST GRADE came back vividly enough to give me serious cause to check my elbows for missing skin when I woke up.

I am remembering outfits I wore as a wee-bairn. I'm remembering smells I haven't smelled since long before I lost all my grandparents. I'm remembering giant wooden tables groaning with food and laughter, tables at which I was too small to be permitted access. I'm remembering the icy pain of hearing laughter at my expense, too. I remember sneers. I remember the darkness from inside the locker. I remember the smell from inside the garbage can. I remember the defeat, the hate, the pain, and amidst that I find a new box of memories to open and it's all old hallmark moments and birthday grins and pink frosting and cat fur.

My head, it would appear, is unpacking as well. And I'd like for it to stop, please.

The fun stuff, is fun. Q.E.D. It's nice to get to the good parts of my childhood. But to get there through the bad stuff... there's just still too many bugs in the soil for this little sapling to really want to investigate too much more. You know?

I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm so close to being able to start the process of re-rooting myself in this new location. It is a wonderful location, after all. But my wounds are still fresh, and the roots are still so bare with all this dirt shaken loose. It's time to get some filler soil and cover this crap up quick-like. So that I can get on to the process of getting stronger again. And bigger. And better.

Well this is new...

Funky, right? I woke up this morning groggy as hell after another long night of nightmares on a full head and a rapidly emptying stomach. Got to the shower just fine and somewhere between getting dressed and going downstairs I noticed something. It "felt" funny in my brains. Like how your eyes feel fuzzy after you stare at the lightbulb for too long or if you have been sleeping with one eyeball smashed into the pillow all night and it refuses to focus. Like how if you get a floaty hair thing in your eye-goo and it drifts around fully avoiding all efforts to see it/focus on it/remove it.

But this was... different.

It lingered. It was big.

It obscured big swaths of space and made reading impossible. I closed my right eye. It got really clear. I closed my left eye, it was still there but... black-ly. I felt like my eye, even though closed, was still looking at this abberation.

I concentrated. The fuzzy part became sharp and edgy and zippy and test-pattern-y like TV's used to do when they ran out of scheduled programming at 2 in the morning.
The non-testpattern-y part was just fuzzy, distorted.

Barely perceptible thrills of panic flooded me. Is it a tumor? Do I have a detached retina? Is this a blood clot? Am I going to DIE today?

I concentrated again. No. I remembered. This is what people talk about seeing before they get migraines.

Hunh. I finished my breakfast. My stomach swirled with tension because it was still convinced I was going to drop dead at any second. I chugged a large glass of room-temperature water with tea in it. I leaned back on the couch with my eyes closed and studied the image on my brain, the blurry, zippy test-pattern crescent on my brain.

With herculean effort, and not an ounce of pain (yet?) I finally convinced my body that imminent doom was not, in fact, nigh. I went upstairs to brush my teeth. I sat on the tub and straightened my hair with my eyes closed. I focused hard on anything but what my eyes were shouting. (HAY! LOOK! THINGY! LOOK! THINGY!)

It passed. It was maybe 15 minutes total. 20 tops. I did the flashlight flash on my eyes to watch my pupils adjust. Both reacted evenly, smoothly, and enthusiastically.

I am, now, officially fine. After some light googling, it appears to have been an opthalmic migraine. Nobody knows what causes them or how to treat them.

I'll keep an eye on it (as they say) and look for patterns and just wait for things to kick up again.

This new little dragon will NOT get the best of me. I'm going to kick it's fizzy little ass. But dude. You know? *Whew*

P.S. Never got the migraine proper, no headache to speak of, just my molars are a little... um... fluffy and my ability to focus on ANYTHING is largely zilch. Moreso than normal, that is. Smartass.

Oh, just emptying my head.

So after a frightfully unscientific facebook poll I just conducted, it appears there’s too much pain in this world. You know this already, though, don’t you. Not exactly a newsflash. After all, when we humans aren’t busy killing eachother with guns and bombs, we’re killing ourselves with cancer, clogged arteries, and (literally) mind-blowing recreational drugs.

Loss is a part of life. There is no life without death. There is no gain without loss. Oversimplifications, probably, but there it is.

All we want, as people, as humans, is to live a nice and a comfortable life. We want the right amount of food with a healthy kind of variety. We don’t want to be cold, or wet, or too hot. We want someone else to do the dishes and wash the floors. We don’t want to get eaten by other animals, by bugs, or by the creepy dude who lives in the smelly upstairs apartment.

Oversimplifications, probably. But there it is.

Being “hidden”, as a rule, is pretty hard to do. It’s easy to be invisible for short periods of time, and one learns quickly how to blend in amid the chaos and agony of teenagerdom. It’s much harder to stay invisible, as time goes by. But it’s hardest, it turns out, to achieve a stable kind of “un-hidden” after many years of "hidden".

Some call it “coming out” but today that usually means letting everyone know you’re gay. This is something else though. It’s as simple, and as difficult, as choosing a life in the sun with other people and all their woes and settling down in their midsts without trying to blend in at all. It’s letting other people see, and observe, and listen and judge every fiber. And it’s continuing to let them do it. And it’s learning to trust them to do so gently. And it’s learning to trust yourself to be able to handle it when they don’t.

There is so much pain in the world. Everyone seems to be hurting these days. Even the happy ones are chased with emptiness, stress, hunger. Dark, dark shadows line every wall. Being “un-hidden” in the midst of it means opening yourself up to all that darkness. It means unsealing the sterilized emotional packet of your heart and contaminating yourself with the full experience of it all. And it will hurt.

Because of all the pain. And because of all the non-pain. Happiness hurts too. Goodness hurts. It’s alien. Being happy is hard to do. Feeling anything is hard to do when it hasn’t been practiced. It’s hard to get right. Tears come with joy. Rage comes with laughter. Laughter comes with humiliation. WTF?

Happiness comes too – often with an overabundance of pride and joy. The beloved husband just had his graduation ceremony last weekend and is a fully fledged and totally certified PhD (fancy hood and all). My beautiful nieces are growing every day into more and more interesting people with new ideas and concerns and discoveries. My folks are both strong and healthy and my in-laws are similarly brilliantly situated for an exciting, fulfilling summer to come.

It also bears mentioning that recently I got to see, live and in person, a very special touchstone of mine. Johnny Clegg was in town recently and performed in a very intimate theater that held (tops) 300 people. My beloved husband and I were in attendance. It was a truly magical experience on par with the time I spent in those few locations in Iceland. If you’re not familiar with his work, shame on me for not sharing it with you sooner. Go google him. Any of his work with Jaluka or Savuka. Brilliant stuff.

He sings a lot about pain. He sings a LOT about pain. All different kinds of pain. After all, this stuff was coming out of South Africa in the 90’s – you know, the whole apartheid gig. Mr. Clegg sang about social inequity, about injustice, about suffering and the sheer cruelty that people show to eachother. He also sang about love and honor. He sang about resilience, strength and beauty. He sang about friendship and all the things that I really couldn't get my head wrapped around in high school. His music was an emotional roadmap for me, alongside other singers like Paul Simon, the Beatles, and other totally non-mainstream musicians. I was already socially isolated from 99% of my peers, after all. I was already pretty much “not there”. No harm in listening to music nobody else cared about. (Thank goodness for that 1% who took the time to reach out to me and be my freinds - no matter how bizarre I was.)

Seeing Johnny Clegg perform was like being in a room with something impossible. It was like going to a fairytale castle and seeing sleeping beauty and realizing that the fairytale is real, after all. It was like looking into the eyes of Baldur himself, most beloved of the gods, and listening to him sing the music you grew up with. It was magic. It was a night full of euphoria, rhythm, sadness, storytelling, and harmonies which will forever remain inseparable from human cruelty.

Now that I’m trying this new path, trying all this coming out of hiding and absorbing all of these experiences properly, these kinds of nights come to me like a punch in the gut. There’s so much out there. It's hard to take all at once, but that's the only way to take it. I’ve been hiding from so much of it. Indeed I’ll probably happily spend the rest of my life continuing to hide from most of it.

It’s comforting to know that other people are coming out of hiding too, and feeling the pain and shaking their fists at the sky. I suppose that’s all I want to say about it. I’m here now. Too. In it. Just like the rest of you, my gentle readers. And the dark times will come to me too, just like the good times. It's good to know that now that I'm up to my eyeballs in it, even when the worst of it is at its most terrifying, it's worth it to be here.

And thanks, I guess, for making it worth it to come out of hiding.

Medicine, Please!

Please forgive the obvious formatting issues with this little photo-confetti post of mine. I tried to get it to work. Really I did. I'm not going to go so far as to say that blogger can suck it, because I'm far too pleased with the chance to share my pictures. However, bear in mind that I'm thinking it REALLY loudly.

Please to be enjoying the tour of the Denver Botanic Gardens that I took myself on yesterday. Let's call it the "textures tour" because that's really what it ended up turning into. It was a great time, spent hours there all by myself.

The March, Denver weather was warm (mid 50's?), wind was gentle, and the whole world was just soft and sweet. It was simply a delightful way to spend the afternoon. Never mind that it was the afternoon after the huge party celebrating my beloved husband's greatest achievement yet: defending his thesis and getting his PhD!

Lord, there were SO many people in the house (all of them completely awesome and welcome back any time!) (even the midget-madness-micro-platoon of children that we hosted... all of you were awesome!)

The beloved husband was mightily hung over and I wasn't really into hibernating (for once) so, when I heard that the botanic gardens were hosting a succulents show and sale, I couldn't resist the chance for a little "me" time. It's not like I don't get "me" time all the time, to be honest, but this was different.

This got me out of the house, for one, and that one tiny detail seems to have made all the difference. The succulents/cactus sale was great and yes, I did walk away with three new heart-stealers. GAWD I love succulents.

One of the things I love about the gardens there is how hard they work to get contrasting colors and textures going throughout the property and incorporated from the ground up to the tops of every structure or statue that's in there.

They do this year-round (as they are open year-round) and their efforts really pay off. It's something I've tried for in my own back yard, but clearly I'm well behind in the funding department. How CAN I compete with this, after all?

My own garden has had varying degrees of wins and fails. The prettiest spring flowers always remind me of the ones at home I've killed, or the ones that have been eaten by *-ing pocket gophers.

But I suppose that's the best part of these botanic gardens. I get to go there regularly now (as a member) and enjoy all the blooms without the boring trap/poison/regret cycle that we get at home. Ahh, the wheel of life and logic. "Let the pros do it" it says, "but I want the prettes!" I say, "then watch 'em die" it says, "but that one lived" I say, "then go see how the pros do it and come back and tell me how well you did" it replies, smugly.

Jerk wheel.

(Sorry this red-grass image posted sideways-ee and all rotated like this. No idea why. Probably becuase they're actually Hayao Mizayaki's grass-head monsters instead of actual, harmless clumps of grass.)

Anyway,

Where was I?

Oh yeah.

Strolling around the gardens by myself (highly recomended, by the way) and taking pictures of anything that caught my eye... talk about great medicine!

Every glazed pot, every stone in the retaining walls, they all were so enchanting in their just-before-springtime readiness. Sure, most of the property was dried out and straw-like, but that's kindof cool too. You know? We have seasons out here, by gods, and each season needs to be embraced for its part in the year.

There is, after all, a time for rest, a time for waking up, a time for sweltering heat, and a time for putting things back to bed again. From the tropical exhibit to the deserts, everything was just oozing with life and happiness.

Even in the quiet and dank areas of the gardens...

Things were "right".

And in the tropical rooms?

Holy crap!

Those flowers were just hit-you-between-the-eyes gorgeous!

YAHOO SPRINGTIME!

Let's try foregoing the mumbling today.

*deep breath*

There was a heavy frost last Friday. It coated everything in this chunky, sugar-crystal frost. Everything was frozen. It was quiet outside, quiet like a child's bedroom just after the whole house has fallen asleep. It was peaceful. The world was whispering and waiting and just smiling at itself while flickering springtime dreams toyed with it's imagination just a few inches beneath the surface.

I hurried through breakfast and used my stolen time to rush outside and capture pictures of the enchanting scenes before me. Everything had been frozen and rendered so ethereal... I knew the beautiful things before me wouldn't last long. The buds of springtime are swelling up all over the place and the promise of rebirth, renewal, and warm air shall be fulfilled anew in just a few months' time.

That which was lush and green months ago was, for a few hours, perfectly framed in it's deathlike trance of winter slumber. Last year's prosperity still had it's reminders to show me. And the lessons from last year's painful sadness still hung heavy in the air.

And yet, there I was. Outside at 7:00am, completely captivated by this snapshot of frosty winter magic that was already melting away around me. What many might consider painfully dreary and bitterly cold struck me as divine and timeless. Where many find dread and betrayal, lonliness and sickness, I continue to find warmth and inspiration. After all, right there the unplanted seeds from last summer. Seeds held aloft in their dried out husks, and what some might consider to be a dreadful loss appeared to me, and only to me, as simply beautiful.

Just. Beautiful.

*deep breath*

Mumbling.

I'm cold today.

There's been a lot of good stuff going on. Also, there's been lot of scary stuff (see, middle east: more of the same) and a lot of really sad stuff (see, earthquake in New Zealand) and a lot of just insane stuff (see, republicans: more of the same). The good stuff, today anyway, just feels drowned out by the noise and angst of the bad stuff.

To be fair, I had a whole lot to drink last weekend. It was an ill-adviseably large quantity, and so that's probably contributing to the soaking-wet cotton quilt of sadness slung over my brains today. No really, I had a beer AND like three glasses of wine. Oy. I used to be able to function with alcohol in my system. Now I can't do that AND I feel like a dried prune for three days afterward. It's really put me in a place where I can understand the thought that... well ONE beer just to cheer m'self up wouldn't be so bad. The dragon's right there, you know? It's purring licking my hand and saying "don't be such a lame-ass" and I'm just standing there looking at the ice cold beers in the fridge, feeling like crap and thinking "well gee, if that weren't such a bad idea, that'd be a great idea!"

And that's when Captain Obvious hits me across the head with a huge, gold-plated trophy of obviousness. To which I'd be violently allergic, because of how it's gold-plated.

So yeah. I'm in a funk. And, lo, it is funky. I walked in the sun at lunch today. Went inside the building and listened to my footsteps in the empty lobby. My heels clicked very grown-up-ly across the granite tiles at a perfectly grown-up pace with the elegant stride of a sincerely grown-up person returning to work after lunch. It didn't sound like me. I was making those sounds and yet... it wasn't me. I feel really disconnected. That's it I guess. Sad. Disconnected.

Not really any good reason for it though. Just my brains wrestling with chemistry in a way that I can't possibly imagine or directly interfere with... aside from more ill-adviseably large quantities of alcohol. Which.... let's face it... if I feel like crap now... you know?

Bright blue sky out there today. Warm, too. 50 degrees. Sunlight is filling every nook and cranny with lusty, orangejuice-splashes of light and cheer. I have a lot to do. I have a lot to look forward to. I have so, so much that I'm thankful for. And still the ice-water dribbles down my spine from the soaking-wet quilt of sadness on my brains. It chills me to the core in the way that only ice-water dribbling down my spine can.

It's only been five months though. It'll take a year for this crap to normalize. And even then, there will be good days and bad days. No reason to expect I'll be artificially elevated all the time. No reason to reject the idea that without it I'd be far worse off. The gods are never so far away, after all, as to be beyond little reminders that things could be far. worse. So neither will I be so far away as to think that this is the new normal and that there will be no end to this funk.
Note to self: Lay off the sauce. Seriously.

This must be why people smoke.

Just to get it out of my head while I'm thinking about it...

How is it possible to feel homesick for a place I’ve never been? How is it possible to miss voices and faces with whom I’ve never shared a single breath? There is a hole somewhere in my brains, and it is unique amongst its brothers because this hole in my brains has a singular echo:

“I miss…” it says quietly, before trailing off again.

Sometimes I get to a wonderful new place and the little voice says “Yes! That! I miss that!” and sometimes I hear a wonderful new voice telling a wonderful new story and the little voice just weeps from loneliness. What is it though, that is missed?

Community? Kinship? I’ve been on my own, spiritually speaking, for a long time now. Me and the big J broke up rather immediately after my confirmation and neither of us has really looked back since. I’ve gotten used to concealing a lot of my new spirituality and faith, just as I’ve gotten used to helping those closest to me get used to the things about me that I can’t conceal. My outward expressions of faith are now easily categorized as “cute” or “quirky”, or ironed smoothly out as one would an otherwise obscure parable.

The short version: I do not fit. Not really.

I am not from the place where I come from, after all. That was made rather inescapably clear to me quite recently. The place where I was raised is somehow not the place that built me. I am more of every other place in the world I’ve ever been than I am of the tiny, zippered, pocket of the world that sent me out. I don’t belong there. I never will. Having finally wrapped my whole head around that idea; I find myself reaching out into the darkness for someplace where maybe I do fully belong after all.

It’s not that I don’t belong here, it’s that I don’t belong here. I largely enjoy my life and all the good things thriving within it. I’m still the luckiest person I know. Yet the tiny hole in my brains still whispers “I miss…”. And I do miss it, whatever it is that I miss.

I miss the wood smoke and the orange light in a cramped, dark room. I miss the chorus of voices. I miss the stories and the beer and the bad jokes. I miss bearing my sorrows out in a room full of sympathetic ears. I miss their open hearts’ consolation, their rejuvenating acceptance, and the thrill of regaining my footing in their midsts.

Gods, I miss the stories.

I’ll never say I was born in the wrong time. Time is what it is and I was born, as they say, precisely when I was “meant” to be. Whatever that means. I love vaccinations and plumbing and things like toilet paper and the internet. I just miss the stories. I miss the fellowship. I miss dancing and the music of other people’s voices ringing out alongside my own. I miss belonging.

It’s not that I’m not perfectly adept at being by myself, blending in where I have to, concealing what I need to when I can’t. But that’s not really belonging, is it?

It hasn’t mattered to me but in fitful spurts over the last 30 years, this whole belonging thing. Now that golden chalice around which I’ve never yet been fully able to wrap my fingers calls out to me with more tempting a song than ever before.

“I miss…” goes the hole in my head.

“I know…” goes the iron in my heart.

“I miss…” goes the hole in my head.

“okay.” decides the cookpot in my soul. “we can try again. Okay. One last time. Go find your spear. Let’s try to do this right.”